The Law Firm Marketing Minute
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The Law Firm Marketing Minute
Law Firm Marketing in 2025: What's Trending
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🧠Law firm marketing is evolving fast—and most firms are falling behind. Eddie and John break down Spotlight Branding’s 2025 Legal Marketing Trends Report, pulling insights from over 15,000 lawyers to spotlight what’s working, what’s not, and what’s flat-out missing. From lead nurturing to AI, from social proof to the #1 marketing mistake firms keep making, this episode is your shortcut to smarter strategy.
đź“Ś Key Takeaways:
- 75% of firms have no real marketing plan—and it shows.
- Networking still delivers the highest ROI (but most lawyers skip it).
- Content, lead nurturing, and AI are reshaping how top firms grow.
👉 8 Ways to Get Clients FAST
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rock and roll. Mike says rock and roll, so we are going to rock and roll. So welcome in. This is the 2025 legal marketing trends report. My name is eddie.
Speaker 1:I am a copywriter here at spotlight marketing and branding. I am here with john, who is a senior copywriter at spotlight marketing and branding. I've been here for about four and a half years. John has been here for over a decade. Let that sink in, john. You've been here for over a decade. So just that sink in John. You've been here for over a decade.
Speaker 1:So just throw a little background on this. Just between, john and I are the ones going over this trends report with you, as I spent months gathering the data. So if we're going back and you got emails from me either asking for sponsorships, asking for survey requests, I was one sending those out. We spent a few months sending out surveys to over 15,000 people in the legal community and then, happily because I don't like to do a lot of work I passed over all that stuff over to John, who spent months compiling and writing in the report. So everything you're going to see here is stuff that John's analyzed. So, john, you want to talk about the give a brief intro is what your background is with the legal marketing trends report and then the last three that you've done before we start kicking the question and answer period.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, like you said, I've been here for 10 years. I've done just about everything there is to do at a marketing agency and about, I guess four years ago I started this Legal Marketing Trends Report and we have a really big audience here at Spotlight Branding and I wanted to hear from them and wanted to get lawyers' thoughts on what they're doing in their firm, how they're marketing their firm and how they feel about their marketing results and kind of all of the marketing advice and everything going on around them. I know there's a ton of marketing agencies out there. There's a ton of people like us telling you what you should do, how you should do it, and the surveys have been really fun. It's been really fun putting this trends report together and you know, yeah, I mean this year's data data was really really interesting and we'll just dive into it all right.
Speaker 1:So you talk about the data being very interesting, and the funny part is that when we start and we send out them the questions I mean there's about around 70 we don't know what the data is going to tell us every year. I mean any any more than what you, anyone that uh want any someone that's reading the report is going to know. So again, even though I was the one tracking down the data, you were the one actually analyzing it. I mean, in last year, the trend you found is that a lot of people needed to reinvest in their marketing, and now the story and the narrative changed. From what we've gathered, and this year, what we've emerged was that you had this thing, idea, called the big disconnect. Now, and Mike, you throw that slide up there. So what is what? What does that mean when you say the big disconnect, and where did you pull that from?
Speaker 2:I just decided that that's what I wanted it to be. Next question no. So you know. In short, you know I think law firms are just kind of shooting themselves in the foot with their marketing strategy. You know, and again, like I said, you know, it's not not totally their fault. You know, because there are so many marketing experts out there and they're all saying different things, right, like some will still say that SEO is still relevant and that that's where you should start. Some are pushing that everything should just be AI. Now, some are saying virtual assistants should just be AI. Now. Some are saying virtual assistants are the way to go. Some are still saying, you know, everything should be on social media.
Speaker 2:And you know it's not just a simple answer is just one thing, right.
Speaker 2:But you know, for these law firm owners and you have so many other areas of your business that you're running right, like you have to also manage your employees, or you have to manage your bookkeeping, you have to manage all of the cases that you're doing, and so it's a lot to keep track of.
Speaker 2:And you know a lot of owners have shiny new object syndrome and so one new marketing person comes along and says, oh, you should have. You should totally be doing this. You can 10X your firm by doing this one simple thing, and then you go chase it for a couple of weeks. You kind of get involved in it, and then you get distracted by something else, or business comes along, or whatever the case is, and it falls through the cracks and you ultimately end up having your hand in several different buckets to where you may be doing several different things, but you're not necessarily doing one thing very well. And what I've seen, you know through this data, especially this year, is that lawyers have all of these very common marketing problems, right. They, you know and we'll get into this right Like they want to take cases they want to be more profitable.
Speaker 2:You know prospects didn't realize that they could be. You know that the firm could help them all of these different things and they all have very simple marketing answers. But it's. It's ironic because the data also shows that a lot of law firms are not specifically doing the, the things that would answer those questions. You know it's like it's like standing. You know it's like being really hungry and standing in a grocery store and not knowing what to do.
Speaker 2:You know like the answers are all around you and just you know don't really know which way to start.
Speaker 3:Here's a quick question what if your marketing brought in more clients who actually respect you, pay on time and don't nickel and dime you? That's exactly what we help solo and small law firms do at Spotlight Marketing and Branding. We focus on keeping you top of mind with the people who already trust you, so you get better clients more often. Let's talk about what that could look like for your firm. When you book a discovery call, you can check the podcast description for a link, or you can go to growmylawfirmfastcom. That's growmylawfirmfastcom. That's growmylawfirmfastcom. All right, let's get right back to the episode.
Speaker 1:But I mean and that's the fun part about the Legal Marketing Trends Report is, a lot of times when we're talking about like, especially as an attorney, when you're trying to find the new shiny object or anything that someone says is really working very well and you're hearing, you're getting emails, you're getting bombarded on social media with 15, 20 different marketing strategies You're always wondering what is the person next to me doing that's actually working? And this is what the Trends Report really dives into. So if one person is telling you yes, this is working for my firm, everything is blowing up, everything is amazing, wonderful, great, fantastic. However, that might not be the case on a broader scale. So as we start diving into what people are actually genuinely concerned about, it's going to start emerging in the trends report One of the things that people are concerned about and we touch upon this every year we always talk about what the biggest worry is One of the things I mean.
Speaker 1:Again, we're going to talk about the things that keep you up at night, especially as a small law firm, as a smaller law firm owner, I mean, you are a business owner, so I know last year I mean the big and you're going to see this again. It's going to surface again this year I'm going to peek behind the curtain is that a lot of people said they just weren't getting. It wasn't that they weren't getting enough clients, it's that they weren't getting the right type of clients, and every attorney who's out there listening to this knows exactly what I'm talking about when he talks about the wrong type of clients. However, this year, 59% of people said they were worried about taking on enough cases or making enough profit. All right, so, john, we can talk about that. I mean the concern that people have and, for the people who do land in this category, I mean what types of things should they pursue? And start basic, start simple and start doing the basic things well before we start elevating?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is again like I said earlier. There's not necessarily one simple, easy solution that you can just set and forget. Right Like, marketing is just not that easy, regardless of how easy other people say it is Right.
Speaker 2:And for this, you know, when you're talking about taking on enough cases and or being profitable. It's really a multi-tiered solution and it's one that you know. You can't just rely on a marketing agency or a marketing staffer to solve for you, right? First of all, yes, your marketing does need to keep you top of mind. It needs to keep you out in front of everybody. It needs to make sure that people understand who you are and how you can help them. Right, that's for sure. But it also might mean that you raise your rates. And again, you know, like I know, that a lot of business owners, at least lawyers, for whatever reason they've been hesitant to charge more. And you know, maybe it's, you know, maybe you're being humble, like, oh, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to take too much money from clients. They're going through a hard time, like whatever. Sure. And you know also and it's even separate from inflation too Like, yes, I know inflation made everything more expensive.
Speaker 2:But this has also kind of been an issue for several years, even before inflation exploded, where lawyers genuinely just don't charge enough for the services that they provide. I think I think we did cover this in the terms report this year, I think it's. I think we have seen an uptick in people you know saying what their average hourly rate is. I know a lot of people don't do hourly people you know saying what their average hourly rate is. I know a lot of people don't do hourly. But you know, once you factor in like your revenue versus how many hours you work, you can figure that out real quick. But that is another big aspect of it. Right, and so over time you know the long term solution. Again, it's not going to happen overnight, it's not going to happen in a month, but over time.
Speaker 2:If you're presenting yourself as the top tier solution, as the expert in whatever it is you're doing right the expert in estate planning, the expert in tax law or bankruptcy, whatever it is right People will just gravitate towards that because A people want to work with the expert and people are not going to necessarily balk at expert level prices because they're not just paying for the legal situation to get handled.
Speaker 2:They're paying for the peace of mind to know that they're getting the best possible outcome, versus going to.
Speaker 2:It's not necessarily the greatest example, but if you're just getting a public defender or a court opponent, you're just hoping that you just get out of something.
Speaker 2:Or it's not necessarily the greatest example, but, like, if you're just getting a public defender or a court opponent, you know you're just hoping that you just get out of something or it's not as bad as it could be Right, versus if you're trying to hire the best criminal defense lawyer you can find you're expecting to get completely, you know charges completely dropped, get off scot-free, you know. And so there's the difference there where how you position yourself will not only help you take on enough cases, because people want to work with the expert, but if you are raising your rates, you're becoming a little bit more profitable. Your caseload drops by 50%. You're still making the same amount of money, but you're doing way less work and you have more time and freedom to do whatever it is you want to do. And that's an extreme example, because that does not happen. And so that's how you fix the profit side of it, and it's backed up by constantly making sure that you're top of mind with your audience.
Speaker 1:All right. So we did talk about real quickly there in terms of positioning yourself as the expert and why, when you position yourself as the expert, you have the ability to raise your rates. I mean, we broke that down. How does that translate into marketing? How do you position yourself as an expert through marketing channels Like where's the connection there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's really in where you're showing up in front of your audience, and so you know, obviously we here we're focusing on blogging, social media, email, stuff like that. But if your audience is showing up in other places, even outside of you know, offline, right, Show up there.
Speaker 2:You know if your audience attends a specific trade show or something every year or whatever. Show up there, you know, have a booth there, make sure you're sponsoring that event or something. Or you know whatever you know, make sure you're showing up. You know, for example, estate planning lawyers, right, show up at churches, you know, and give free talks and workshops and stuff on what people can be doing. It's stuff like that that you can do to market yourself kind of, even beyond just an easy blog social media posts, consistent social media presence, a consistent email reminding people of who you are. It's showing up and getting out in front of your audience where they are already at.
Speaker 1:Which almost perfectly leads me in my next point, because I don't know if you've seen the next slide, but I mean, one of the things that did not change from last year is that I mean, especially in terms of simplicity, the thing that generates the highest ROI in terms of marketing is usually not what people turn to or what people think of as marketing, and that, of course, is networking, being where the people are. I mean talk about why this isn't surprising, and even more so, why is networking, of all things in the marketing world, the foundational element, and how does that connect to other marketing initiatives? Why should we spend time networking and how does it turn into marketing?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the crazy part about it is you're essentially planting the seeds for what a good marketing strategy would do right, absolutely you know you're showing up, whether it's, you know, a local bar event.
Speaker 2:You know where you're networking with other attorneys who are going to send you referrals, or you're at a BNI or a chamber of commerce or some other kind of networking event.
Speaker 2:Whatever the case may be, what you're doing there is you're introducing yourself, you're letting people know who you are and how you help, and if you're doing it well, you're taking their information, plugging it into your email list and staying top of mind with them. You know, several years ago, decades ago, you would do that by giving them a phone call, sending them a card, you know, whatever, staying in touch, right, meeting them for coffee, you know, every quarter or so, just to stay in touch and stay top of mind. Right Now you can do that through social media. You can do that through email, email newsletters, whatever the case is, and you do that with your even just your core referral network other attorneys, other business professionals who would refer you work. You do that with past clients, current clients, even, who send you more work. And then you start building out your own network. You, you, you extend that web out a little bit more. You know we talked about. You know, get on.
Speaker 2:You know podcast right, like if another business professional has a podcast, get on their podcast or do a co, you know, co present on a webinar or a lunch and learn with them, Right, and then that way you can get access into their network. And all of a sudden, you know it's just it's it's virality, really like to it at its core, where you're just kind of spreading out and you're starting to show up in more and more places, getting access to more and more people, and that it all starts with the networking and over time you get access into each referral sources network and your audience grows that way. And the key is to keep doing what you're doing and keep treating those new networks the same way you started out by again staying top of mind, staying in touch.
Speaker 1:All right. So in terms of networking I mean in the copywriting world when we have a landing page and someone actually goes to said landing page I've seen the numbers A lot of people will actually click to book a consultation or they'll click to download a resource. They'll get all the way to the resource and not actually fill it out and we have to remind them several times to do that. So the reminding element is what I'm talking about here. So if you do actually go out and network and you hand some of your business card, you have an amazing meeting. I mean you click whatever. What do you have to do to keep that relationship alive beyond that initial meeting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting. So one of the favorite stories I have and if you've listened to me on a podcast or seen another webinar, I've probably told this story a bunch. But we had a client who was on a flight back to his office in Miami. He got sat beside this person he'd never met before they got to talking. They got to talking, you know guy learned that. You know our client was a business lawyer. Guy he was talking to was kind of an entrepreneur. He had, you know, aspirations of opening his own business one day. So our client got his card, got back to his office, plugged it into his you know his email and started sending him a monthly newsletter. And you know, this dude gets business cards like that all the time. He's a networking machine. He's constantly just adding new people into his email list.
Speaker 2:I was like two or three years later the same guy reached back out to him. He's like hey, I don't know if you remember me, we were on a flight together a couple of years ago. I'm finally ready to open my business and I want you to help me get everything sorted out on the legal side. And again, it's that was easy business, right, it was a you know a couple of hour conversation, which I mean. They were hostages together on that airplane and what else were they going to do? They learned about each other, gets the info and so it's. It was the act of just simply staying in touch. And it was created, that system where it's just automatic and you know for it. Essentially, you know client was paying us a few hundred dollars a month to create the blog, the email newsletter that went out to his list every month for a few years, and it just generates that business that, yeah, some leads come in. They're ready to go immediately.
Speaker 2:For a lot of lawyers, though, it is such a it is such a long sales cycle, especially for family lawyers business. A lot of people are doing research. A lot of people aren't necessarily ready to make the move right then, and so they're going to do their research, they're going to get into your pipeline, but then they're probably just going to sit there for a while. And one of the biggest things that I've seen where law firms drop the ball is they get a bunch of leads. However, they get them, whether it's networking or maybe you're doing some lead gen campaigns, whatever it is. They get those leads and then they don't do anything with them. They just kind of sit and wait for that person to take the next action. And that's where you lose business to other firms. That's where you know you run into this issue and we'll talk about it, I think, here in a minute.
Speaker 2:You know you run into this issue and we'll talk about it, I think, here in a minute. You know the the client not realizing that you could have helped them in the first place, and so it's. It's not just the act of generating leads, it's nurturing them and continuing to stay in touch over a long period of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what John's talking about is, I mean, from the moment that person networked on the plane. When you aptly said that there were hostages on an airplane, I mean that could be misconstrued, but I think it's a gem of a line. Um, you're taking that nurturing period in which, with this person, it was through a newsletter. So in our next slide, I mean we're talking about trends to watch out for. I mean things that we've seen. And the three things I'm going to throw out here is that there's content remains king. I mean we're still what we'll touch on, that the social proof, and lead nurturing. And lead nurturing is exactly what we're just referring to a moment ago here, that process. So what do each of these three things mean for a solo and small firm owners? I mean, it's easy to say content or main scheme, but what does that mean for a small law firm?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's everywhere right.
Speaker 2:And there's so much. I hate to use the term noise, but there is a lot of worthless noise out there. Just think about all of the content that we all consume on a regular basis from the moment we wake up. You know, depending on when you scroll through your social media feeds maybe you do it first thing in the morning, or maybe you do it on your lunch break or sometime in the afternoon or right before you go to bed there's a ton of content there Walking in, or maybe on your commute air walking in, or maybe on your commute, you know, listening to a podcast. Content ads in the podcast is content within content.
Speaker 2:Driving in, you've got billboards trying to get your attention, signage on all of the buildings trying to get your attention. Everything is content, essentially Right, and everything is vying for a small piece of real estate in your mind so that you will remember them when the need comes for whatever right, whether you're hungry. Oh, I saw a sign for a new item at Taco Bell. Okay, I'm gonna go try that right. Why did you think of that? Because you saw the ad or you saw the sign coming in and again they got you. They occupied a little piece in your brain and you went on Right, and so it's just small things like that, and so you have to get in on that competition, otherwise you're going to be forgotten, even if you know you did a really good job. You know I, one of the one of the traps that a lot of law firms fall into is especially with, like, the clients that they work with. They think, oh man, I did such a really good job with them, they'll definitely remember me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I won't you know?
Speaker 2:I, um, I got a traffic ticket, uh, three or four years ago, had a law firm handle it for me. I could. I don't. Honestly, I don't remember the name of them. I know where they're located, cause I know what city I was in, but I don't remember the name of them. And I mean, I could probably go back through my emails and try to find them. But if someone comes up to me he's like oh man, I just got a ticket, you know. Do you know a law firm that can help?
Speaker 1:me. Nope, you don't, I don't, I genuinely don't. It's like, yeah, go find somewhere else. You know, I don't have for you and I don't know if you know this, john, but I'm a divorced individual and I and anyone who's yeah, I know, but yeah, I made it yeah, 21, so anyone that's I mean. So I, I tell the story a lot. I mean, after my divorce, about three months, three months, a person I worked with very closely for a long time, that I trusted and liked a lot, three months afterwards, someone's asked me for divorce attorney referral. I could not remember his name and he spelled his name really oddly too. It had every reason. I mean, this is, this is someone I genuinely would have given a referral to, but there was no lead, there was no nurturing element of there. So I mean, so we understand where content is, we're seeing where lead nurturing. I mean just touch on social proof real quick before we go on the next slide.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you know that is the point side of it. Even though we, for many, many years, have reached the importance of referrals and making sure that you're maximizing your referrals, they work differently now. Just because someone gets a referral from their best friend doesn't mean they're just going to take it and immediately hire you. They're still going to do their research. You know they're not just going to. You know Bob's referral doesn't mean as much as it used to. You know they. They really are going to, you know, do their research and they need the. They basically need the backing of dozens of other people to verify the referral that Bob gave them, you know.
Speaker 2:So that's why it's really important to have, you know, a good amount of testimonials, whether it's on your website or you get good Google reviews or Facebook reviews, because that's where people are looking. People want to make sure that they're working with a top rated attorney. You don't have to have five stars. It's going to be really difficult for a law firm to get five stars across the board, because you're always going to make somebody mad and they're going to get petty and leave you a bad review along the way. But you know, four, four and a half, is good to strive for. That's going to get the deal done for people who are looking at you based on referrals, and so that's where that element of it is really important now as something that law firms need to focus on.
Speaker 2:And again you can very easily build that into your systems you know, have different you know points along the way. In a case where you know you say, hey, if you've been happy with the work we've done so far, would you just take two minutes to leave us a review? Or, you know, figure out a different way to do it. Or maybe, once the case is done, figure out a way to ask for it there. But definitely something that should be an additional part of your marketing strategy.
Speaker 1:Well, with that said, let's shift away from people for a moment. I mean, let's talk about AI. This is one of the things we promised to talk about and it's just showing up a lot. I mean, we said that AI is not going to replace lawyers. I'm not tolerating that argument, but we are pushing forth We've said this for about at least two years now that lawyers who use AI are going to replace those who don't. I mean, the positive thing you see often in this trans reporter is that 44% of people said they're either excited about it or they were using it, but the big gap there is that 56% of firms say they have no opinion of it, they're not interested in using it or have a negative view of it. All right, so for those 56% that are either hesitant or have no opinion on AI whatsoever, what are some of the easiest low-risk applications that they can incorporate into their life, that they can start using this and at least get their feet wet, at least getting toward the other end of the direction?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean, the good news on this is, if I remember correctly, I think that 44 is up from last yes, it is, it is, totally is, yeah so, and I think maybe last year might have been the first time we asked about it it was, it was generally just overly a negative response, yeah very so yeah, it's good that you know.
Speaker 2:And again like and for the most part I think like a lot of people aren't really going to have a choice like, like you know, it's either you know, get on board or get out, because you know a lot of.
Speaker 2:CRMs. I think Clio is. If they haven't yet, they're about to launch an AI you know assistant within their CRM. I think there's another one, another big CRM that does it now. Now, but so if you haven't like, if you really haven't done anything with AI or anything like that, like, honestly, like chat GPT is still a really great starting point.
Speaker 2:Now the technology in that is is moving so fast that a lot of the criticisms that you've probably heard about chat GPT, especially in the legal space, have have already been resolved, or there are ways, established ways to prevent those mistakes from happening again. Right, like you know, a lot of you, as soon as I said chat GPT, some of you probably immediately were like no, but wasn't there those lawyers who tried to use chat GPT in front of a judge to make an argument and the judge quickly threw it out because it was made up or wrong information. Yeah, well, that's been resolved. Right, and there are ways to verify the information that ChatGPT gives you, or you use it as it's intended, which is as a tool and not just an outright replacement, that you verify the information. So you know, chatgpt can do hours of research for you in mere seconds, and then you can still take the time to verify.
Speaker 2:You know small things like that and, honestly, the truth of the matter is a lot of these AI programs out there still use ChatGPT as its base and their programs are built off of ChatGPT's engine. So you know, it's still a great starting point and a lot of this stuff is moving at lightning speed. So I mean you know what might be true, newer ways to adjust. I mean it's like think about you know any kind of new technology that has come along. You know radio and TV have changed the way people consume newspapers, because again get news for different, and then on top of that the internet has changed the way people consume what they used to on TV and radio. So again, it's just it's part of that cycle and you know it's going to be an integral part of our lives, whether you want it to be or not.
Speaker 1:I know we are going to send the trend support out, probably later this week, but I will also point out that when you do see it, I mean the vast majority of the people who are using AI in the legal world are using it for research. So you're going to see that it's upwards of 70 of the people using I were. I mean there's multiple answers, but research was the dominant answer there. Before we move on, but I mean so you already turn the next slide. You already touched upon like this in about two slides ago, but on about 44 of our responses they're losing business because the prospects didn't realize the firm can help them, and that's painful to hear. It's, it's um, it's um. I mean the, the, I mean the easiest cheese ball solution like just market yourself better. I mean marketing is definitely the answer here. And is that? That's okay? That's, that's lame. But I mean what specifically confirms? Do to have a consistent messaging to actually prevent this from happening or lose out on a prospect who didn't know they existed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean again it's, you know it's consistent content creation and consistent top of mind awareness and staying in front of them. You know so, like in my current role, you know, and, eddie, what kinds of cases do you want to take on right now? You know what do you want to be known for and immediately that get you know that ideas quickly come in. You know it was like oh, yeah, you know I really like doing this.
Speaker 2:I'm seeing a lot of this right now. I want to touch on this. Whatever it is Right, and so it's. It's making sure that people understand you know all the ways you help. You know it's I. We had a client. I had a client one time I was a state planning lawyer and he did. You know he. He built a basic will for this client and then he sent out a newsletter and the newsletter was about revocable versus irrevocable trust and got multiple emails from past clients Like, hey, I didn't know you did this. This seems like something that I might need. Let's talk.
Speaker 2:And again, it's repeat business, it's additional referrals. You know where it's like, even if it's a past client who doesn't need your help. Again it's like, hey, I've got you know a family friend or whoever who doesn't need this. I'm forwarding this email along to them. I hope you get to work with them. And again, it's simple. It doesn't have to necessarily take hours and hours of work.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're not super tech savvy, it may be pretty difficult for you to do this on your own. But also, maybe, if you're a lawyer, you don't need to be doing this on your own. You need to be focusing on the casework and letting marketing people handle it for you. But either way, whatever path you take, this is such a simple way and it's a very cost effective way to, you know, get referrals, get repeat business, but also make sure that people truly understand what kind of work you do. You know I've also, you know, heard clients. You know some of them. Some of them are a little more open to it than others, but you know, some clients just express frustration that people reach out to them to handle their traffic tickets and they don't do that Right.
Speaker 2:It's like no, I'm a, you know I'm a, I'm an estate planning lawyer. I don't handle traffic tickets, but I still get people calling me for that. Well, the way to do that is you need to focus on what it is you want to take on, and we'll talk about this, I think, in a couple of slides, but good marketing should also repel people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, filter in, filter out, I mean. And the other thing too we dig deep dive on people's websites. If you're a law firm right now, find someone who doesn't know you or one of your friends that doesn't just knows you're a lawyer, show them your website and ask them what type of law you practice. Give them like three seconds, look at your website and say tell me what type of law I do specifically. Most people. You'd be shocked how few people can tell you when they get to your website as to what you actually do.
Speaker 1:All right, so the next slide we're going to talk about real quick. I mean, this is mainly about three more. So this may sound self-serving. I promise it's not. So if you're going to spend these dollars, spend them anywhere, not necessarily on us, but definitely the point is I'm making here is we've discovered a vast majority of firms are spending less than $1,000 to market themselves. They do it. I understand why you're hesitant. I understand why it's a gamble. I understand you may have been burned so many times by bad marketing agencies in the past. Why should you dip your toe back in the water and spend more than a thousand? How much should they be spending?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you got to. The simple thing is you got to spend money to make money, right, like that's easy business principle, I mean. But it also, you know, let's just just assuming that you know people here on this webinar are spending about a thousand dollars a month. If you're trying to just generate leads, like if you are just doing SEO or just doing pay-per-click ads, that $1,000 a month may not really cover what you need to get the results that you absolutely need to keep the business going or keep growing in the way that you want it to grow. Because, like I mentioned earlier, you've also got to nurture those leads. It's great if you generate 50 leads a month, but if you're not doing anything with them and you're lucky that one or two of those 50 convert, like there's so much more money and revenue you're leaving on the table just because you're not nurturing them.
Speaker 2:You know you can do one of those things decently for $1,000 a month. You can either generate leads or you can nurture them for $1,000 a month, but you cannot, absolutely cannot, do both really well, and so that's you know, broadly speaking, you know probably about 10% of your revenue should be reinvested back into marketing. That's a general baseline. But it kind of depends on, like, where you're located. You know, like if you're in a New York or Chicago or Los Angeles, like a giant metro market, obviously you know you're probably going to need to invest a little bit more than that because you have so much competition. But at the same time, like if you're in you know Bismarck or you know Cheyenne Wyoming and you have like two other law firms that you're competing with, you may not have to, you know, invest as much into your market.
Speaker 1:No offense to anyone in Bismarck or Cheyenne that may or may not be watching this, but that's completely fine. I don't think you buy lunch in new york for a thousand dollars anymore. Yeah, and the other thing too is, if you are, if you are committed to spending the amount, the least amount possible, and you're just going to do one thing we highly recommend you just do a newsletter. I mean that the roi usually is about 36 to 40 to 40 to 1 um if, and it's going to keep in touch with the people. So if you, if worst case scenario, if you're still not committed to putting more money into your marketing budget, you can, you can spend a very little amount and see and see results that way, all right.
Speaker 1:So this is, this is another slide. It's more, more interactive. You may be able to click on something here. So when you look at we're looking at marketing plans I mean 70, this is a huge number 75, 75% of people said they either had no marketing plan whatsoever or they updated it annually, if ever. I mean that is a massive gap. So for people who have been avoiding it, why should they have one and how can they get started?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the reason to have a marketing plan is it gives you a starting point to figure out the ROI and that's the biggest thing, Obviously.
Speaker 2:Obviously, us as a marketing agency, that's one of the biggest things that we get asked is like oh, what kind of ROI am I getting? Or, you know, if a client schedules a call, it's like oh, I want to better understand the ROI I'm getting. Well, having a marketing plan can help you figure that out, you know. And, yes, the person doing your marketing should be able to tell you the kind of ROI you can expect or where to track it or whatever the case is. But a marketing plan, you know, does that in and of itself. You know, I think Mike will probably drop the link to our there it is.
Speaker 3:There it is.
Speaker 2:He is on it. So yeah, scan that QR code. You know, you can just point your phone at the screen. It's amazing how technology works.
Speaker 1:I still don't know how a QR code works, but it's amazing, I don't know. I don't still know how light bulb works either, but that's a different point.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and so you know. But the marketing plan, you know it, can you know that template, especially, can break down all the different avenues. You know whether you know you want to go for SEO or pay-per-click ads, sponsoring events, email marketing, whatever it is right, and figure out how much budget you want to allot to it, how many leads you need to generate or how many you know prospects you need to convert from it, and that can give you, you know, a good glimpse into your ROI. And from there you kind of figure out all right, do I need an agency to handle this? Can I handle this on my own? Do I need to hire someone in house or hire a virtual assistant to do whatever the case is? You know it is.
Speaker 2:it is just a really powerful tool that you know can almost act as an extension of your existing firm budget you know, rather than just marketing being a single line item on your budget, it now becomes this more expanded, comprehensive piece where you know sure you have your regular operating costs, but then you have a marketing section, specifically that you know, marketing section specifically that breaks down all of the individual spend in there and what you hope to get out of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and that said, for the final and last slide of the day here, I said from marketing goals, what people want out of the marketing, the problem they want to solve. The clear winner here was that 37% said they wanted more of the preferred case and we touched upon this earlier about better clients, not just more clients, but the type of clients you want to work with, how to filter in, how to filter people out. So how can marketing filter out the wrong clients and filter in the correct ones? We talked about this briefly through blogs, especially with revocable trust. But what other methods do we have in order to get, to get track, the right types of clients?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, I mean it's going to start with your website, like you mentioned, and making sure that it's really clear what it is that you do. You know, because that's where people are going to go. You know, we talk about the importance of SEO, like if you can type in your name or your firm's name into Google right now and you show up as the first, maybe second result your.
Speaker 3:SEO is great.
Speaker 2:Right Beyond that whatever, but you know it's going to start with your website. You want to make it really clear and obvious. Blogging, like we mentioned and again it goes back to the QCIs that I mentioned earlier, when you're thinking about how you thinking about how to attract your preferred cases, it's making content around, what you want to take on and what you want to be known for. Video is a great way to do it. I have a client right now. He is one of the best marketing minds I've ever met in a lawyer. No offense to any of my other clients, but this is just where he thinks.
Speaker 2:A lot of the time he sits down like three times a week and creates like a five minute video. He has a really nice setup. He creates a really comprehensive video about a specific topic and he has a team where he can splice that in. He makes a version for Instagram Reels. He has the other version up on YouTube, you know, and that makes my job easy because it's easy to create social media. You know content out of that, but he does a really good job of making a very specific topic and finding different ways to present it, and it's very clear what he does, what he wants to be known for. And so, again, you don't have to. You know, you only have to be as involved as you want to be. You can very well, very easily, get the same results. Not the same results, but consistent results and good results. One blog a month, one email newsletter a month, because we have a ton of clients, and we've heard this several times.
Speaker 1:Every email newsletter.
Speaker 2:they send out multiple referrals, multiple requests for business and that is so easily attainable for everybody here.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I mean I would be amiss here not to highlight the other element here. You granted 37%, so they want more preferred cases, which just equates to better clients, but they're right behind that at 32%, so they needed more leads. I mean spotlight branding used to be called spotlight branding. We're now spotlight marketing and branding because we merged and we do paid ads now, so it's tough not to talk about leads at the moment. So talk about how leads are generated and why you need to incorporate things like lead magnets, drip campaigns and landing pages.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know again it's. You know another way to go about it and if you need to generate leads, you know a lot of law firms. Especially if you've been around a while or you do a ton of networking, you have a good size audience that you can generate growth from. But on the lead gen side, you know a lot of lawyers still want to get into lead gen. You know, and it's exciting, it's fun and I get that.
Speaker 2:But you have to go about it a certain way. You know, and so many law firms for many years just kind of assumed that SEO was the way to go and just invested so much into Google, so much into rankings and there was a ton of risk there because of how the algorithm is constantly changing and you know thousands, tens of thousands of dollars in investment could get wiped out. You know, overnight with an algorithm change. You know the more consistent way is through these paid ads. You know whether it's on Google. You know Google ads, linkedin ads, facebook ads, stuff like that, and the easy way to do it is you present this lead magnet.
Speaker 2:It's free resource If you already have a free resource on your website yeah, you can use the same free resource that's on your website as the same lead magnet for your paid ads and it's just, it gets people in, you know, it presents you as an expert and it presents you as giving helpful information and resources to people who may need it. You know, immediately or down the line. And again, it's all about setting up that nurturing, you know, and if you do it, you can transition very easily from the lead gen to the nurturing, because that's where these email drips and these email sequences come in. The lead gen to the nurturing, because that's where these email drips and these email sequences come in.
Speaker 2:Someone downloads this lead magnet. They'll get an email immediately with the actual file, but then you should absolutely set up four or five, maybe six, you know, additional emails after that over like the peer, over a period of like the next two, two and a half, three weeks of just getting them. You know, getting to know, your firm, reminding them hey, you downloaded this resource. Hey, this is how we help, this is why we did this. Whatever, and at the same time, once that lead comes in, you should be adding them to your regular email newsletter list so that, even once the drip campaign ends, even if they haven't made a decision yet, they're still in your system, they're still top of mind. You know, getting that top of mind reminder, you know, and it just becomes this, this constant ecosystem of touch points.
Speaker 1:Well, we've touched on a lot here, so we're at the 42 minute mark. We're going to start wrapping up. In the next slide you can see if you do have any questions for anything that's on this trends report, anything that you marketing questions, call us and let's talk. I mean this is this is this is a discovery opportunity to talk to our Senior Business Development Manager and her name is Jana. You can ask her anything about marketing. Ask her anything about what you've seen in this report and whether or not this makes sense for you in your life. Before we do sign off here, I do want to make sure that there's anyone in the chat that had any questions on anything that we've seen or any of the topics or how they specifically apply to you, we can answer them here. We'll give you like a minute or two, but other than that, I mean this has been a good 43 minutes and I'm excited to get the trends report out.
Speaker 1:We spent months doing this. We have surveys that we sent out to 15 000 people, so if, uh, you've been on this call, odds are you're going to be getting another one of these copies really soon. It's going to be a digital copy and if you ever do see us in an event, we'll have a stack, pile of them, of actual publication copies as well, actually hard proof. So we'll be there as well. I thank you for joining us. I thank you for the time you spent looking at the Trends Report, doing a survey, filling it out or just visiting us here today to talk about it. Other than that,